Big Money at Play in MMJ: WeedMaps Buys Marijuana.com for $4.20 Million

Earlier this week, a well-known MMJ company made a blockbuster acquisition, as least for the medical pot space.

WeedMaps Media – which operates a a popular site for dispensary listings and reviews  – acquired Marijuana.com, giving it a premier domain name that is a powerhouse when it comes to search engine rankings.

Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch reported that the price tag was (what else?) $4.20 million. In other industries, that’s just a drop in the bucket. But for the emerging medical pot sector, it’s a substantial sum for an acquisition, given that such deals are so rare at this point. The move signals that there is indeed big money involved in the industry, and experts say we’ll likely see more of these kinds of deals involving ancillary medical pot companies in the future.

WeedMaps – a unit of General Cannabis Inc., a publicly traded, marijuana-focused Internet marketing company – will officially take control of the domain name and other assets in early January. Marijuana.com currently focuses on providing news and information via bulletin boards, generating revenues through banner ads and sponsors. The 16-year-old site now boasts more than 3.5 million page views a month and has 300,000 registered users.

WeedMaps plans to overhaul the site, add new types of content such as reviews and videos, and synch Marijuana.com’s members with its own user base. The company said the move allows it to essentially double its membership numbers to more than half a million.

“By integrating Marijuana.com with WeedMaps.com, we can monetize both properties more efficiently by reaching a wider audience of industry constituents and increasing business to our clients through greater exposure,” Justin Hartfield, chief web officer of WeedMaps, said in a press release. “In doing so, WeedMaps seeks to become the first medical cannabis user-niche advertising network in the world.”